ARTSBEAT; Newport, Despite Objections, Approves Maya Lin Project

By RANDY KENNEDY

Published: December 16, 2011

Over the objections of a group of vocal opponents the city council of Newport, R.I., voted Wednesday night to approve the use of a small park for a permanent installation being designed by the artist Maya Lin to evoke the city's past and to honor the heiress Doris Duke.

The proposal to allow the $3.5 million project to proceed on city-owned land near the harbor, in the park known as Queen Anne Square, was approved by a 5-to-1 vote. The installation, called ''Meeting Room,'' would involve building three low-walled structures within the roughly one-acre space of the square, each to be made from salvaged local stone and intended to suggest the foundations of vanished centuries-old buildings that can still be found throughout New England. Duke paid for and supervised the creation of Queen Anne Square in the late 1970s, wresting the open space from a former commercial area of derelict buildings.

The memorial, to be paid for with private money, was commissioned by the Newport Restoration Foundation, which Duke founded in 1968. The foundation and other supporters of the project say the artwork will honor her in an unobtrusive and intelligent way and will show that Newport, which has meticulously preserved its colonial and Gilded Age heritage, is also able to look toward the future.

But the proposal split some of Newport's old guard, prompting residents with long family histories, and memories, in the resort town to take up angry positions. Opponents described the project as ersatz history, commissioned mostly to lend Newport the cachet of a big-name contemporary artist and they further complained that the low foundations - which they compared to cat-litter boxes - would serve only to catch windblown trash and trip people trying to play sports in the park.

Construction is scheduled to begin soon and the installation is expected to be completed by the summer.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.